“I fear for guys like Lungi, ‘KG’ and ‘Annas’, because when you have a good wicketkeeper who’s experienced, they get you wickets.” – Dale Steyn on De Kock’s Test retirement.
Telford Vice | Johannesburg
HAPPILY, St George’s Park was built long before architects got hold of cricket grounds and bastardised them into stadiums. So, unlike in more modern venues, where the players and the press are usually kept as far away from each other as possible, the dressing room in Gqeberha sits cheek by jowl with the press box.
The two first-floor areas share a short flight of stairs from ground level. It was there, before the third Test against England in January 2020, on the landing that connects one set of rooms to the other, that Quinton de Kock was made indelibly human for a gaggle of passing reporters. As they crested the stairs, they saw his familiar figure. He was sat on a low wall, a cigarette between his lips, its smoke curling into the summery softness of the Eastern Cape’s air.
It was a private moment made quasi-public, and although no-one had done anything wrong it felt wrong to be there. De Kock’s eyes met the reporters’ for no longer than it took for the mutual discomfort to be communicated. As they shuffled past he looked sharply downward. No words were exchanged beyond a grunted greeting, as if even the most minor exchange would have lent those few seconds form and substance and therefore made them real. Instead, they remained liminal and ethereal and life went on as if this had never happened.
Until Thursday evening, that is. Some of those same reporters thought their day’s work was done. They had dissected and analysed India’s surge to victory in the Centurion Test, and made dinner plans. Almost seven hours after Ravichandran Ashwin ended the match by removing Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi with consecutive deliveries, a release arrived announcing De Kock’s retirement from Test cricket. After 54 matches, a potentially great career had been snuffed out.
Moving a restaurant booking half-an-hour forward isn’t difficult, unlike trying to pull into focus a person you know only from what they show you on the field. And from accidental glimpses of them, say, smoking a cigarette on the landing. De Kock has done many memorable things as a cricketer, feats that are known far and wide and celebrated for their dash and daring. Yet his extraordinary ordinariness in defiance of the life he has lived since making his international debut in a T20I against New Zealand at Kingsmead in December 2012 is at least as impressive as his achievements.
De Kock is special. He is also flawed. But he is not especially flawed. That he refused to take a knee until compelled to do so by CSA’s board was regrettable and disappointing. It suggested he couldn’t or didn’t want to understand why performing this small, harmless gesture was important to so many of his compatriots. Others among his compatriots, most of them white, agreed with his original stance and have defended him vociferously.
This has made De Kock a standard-bearer for toxic whiteness, and a target — sometimes irrationally — for those black and brown people who espouse a racially charged reaction to that evil. Here’s a flavour of the first, dredged from the depths of the online commentary that has greeted De Kock’s decision: “Tragic. CSA are responsible for the loss of all their marquee players. Their politics, total ineptitude, and witch hunts are to blame. No other country in the world acts like this. Shame on CSA.” And here’s the second, from the same cesspool: “‘Quinnie’ is behaving like a child.”
The former is a transparently dishonest attempt, laced with latent racism, to distort the truth that South Africa’s lagging broader economy is taking its toll on cricket in the country, which has hardly ever been managed properly — including when it was run by whites. Conversely, many will find the latter view clumsily ironic, and in league with the simplistic, spiteful narrative that whites cannot do anything right. Including be a man.
From the quotes attributed to De Kock in Thursday’s release and in the accompanying video and audio of him speaking, it’s plain he believes he is quitting Test cricket precisely because he wants to live up to his idea of a man.
“I’ve got a baby on the way in the next couple of days,” De Kock said. “It was one of the factors that was part of my decision. One of the small factors. I am a big family guy. I really want to be there for my kids growing up. It’s one of the main factors. I’m quite excited. I don’t know how I am going to go about it. It’s obviously my first time. I’ll do what ‘Quinnie’ does and just take it as it comes.”
He also said: “I’m not too sure. My emotions are not too sure. I don’t know whether to be excited or nervous. I’m going to take it as it comes. It’s quite a big thing for me. When I was 19, 20, I didn’t think I’d ever have kids, and at this moment I’ve got one on the way. It’s quite a big thing for me. I really want to be there for the baby as she grows up. I really want to be part of her childhood. So, quite nervous.”
And: “I’ve done exactly what my heart is telling me to do.”
There, in that beautiful jumble of words, you have the real Quinton de Kock — the clarity of thought, the fuzzy logic, the contradictions, the care, the carefreeness, the limitations, the ambition, the confidence, the fragility, the child, the man.
The obscene amount of money today’s players earn should be questioned. But if that helps someone like De Kock be a better man, a noble purpose is served. Yes, he is a shining example of what privilege produces. But would he have the freedom to be the father he wants his child to have if he was stuck in some civilian job, working long and empty hours? Many fathers who want the same for their children can’t provide it. Does that mean those who can should not?
Social media has added layers of context to those questions. More acutely than ever in the history of what we like to call civilisation, stars of stage, screen and everything else who dare present more than one dimension of themselves to the world are rejected and attacked with the kind of vitriol that used to be reserved for murderers and tyrants. It’s as if we are disgusted or terrified that they should be people like us.
Another cricketer who has had the courage to reveal more than just his talent for the game was asked if he would give an assessment of De Kock. “I love the kid, so why not,” Dale Steyn, De Kock’s fishing buddy, among other connections, told Cricbuzz. “He’s a phenomenal player. Had he been around for a couple more years I think we would have seen his average go up and up and up. He would have played over a hundred Tests, that’s for sure. And then we would have seen the best of him. Because Test cricket is a game you’re learning all the time, and I think you mature as a batter and as a wicketkeeper. So you get better and better.
“His cricket brain is phenomenal. It shows in the way that he plays; he’s a good, thinking cricketer. So it’s sad to see he’s going because he would have had an incredible career. That said, he’s still going to be around playing white-ball cricket.”
Much of that sadness has been expressed in terms of De Kock’s value to South Africa as a batter. Steyn, who bowled with him behind the stumps in 79 internationals across the formats, offered a different perspective: “Without him I fear for guys like Lungi, ‘KG’ [Kagiso Rabada] and ‘Annas’ [Anrich Nortjé], because when you have a good wicketkeeper who’s experienced, they get you wickets. They make the subtle changes in the field. You know: fine leg is standing two more metres to his left, and because of that he takes a clean catch. That’s experience, and that’s what ‘Quinnie’ has got. That’s what his cricket brain offers. So I feel for the bowlers because a new wicketkeeper can come in — and I’m not saying he won’t be able to do it — but he’s going to take time to find his feet.
“I know through the experience of having one of the best wicketkeepers in the business in Mark Boucher and then having somebody like AB [de Villiers] behind the stumps — a phenomenal cricketer — made my life a hell of a lot easier. I picked up a lot more wickets just through conversations with the wicketkeeper.”
Of course, Steyn also knows De Kock as a batter: “He was such an attacking player that he took the game away from teams. Yesterday [Thursday, at Centurion, where South Africa were bowled out for 191 chasing 305], if he had gone out there and played the way that he does and didn’t drag one on … He could score a hundred off a hundred balls. And all of a sudden you’ve got that Test match. That’s his capability. Kyle Verreynne [De Kock’s likely replacement in the second Test at the Wanderers on Monday] is a fantastic batter, but he’s not the same kind of player as ‘Quinnie’.”
He isn’t. No-one is. Worse yet, Verreynne doesn’t smoke.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 